This invention pertains generally to the field of interactive programming and more specifically to creating interactive programming using captions from television programs.
Some television programs include captioning information created by the television program broadcaster. The captions are encoded into the television signal and broadcast to a viewer's television where the captions are extracted from the television signal and displayed on the viewer's television screen. The captions are intended for the hearing impaired and contain textual representations of the auditory components of a television broadcast. While intended for the hearing-impaired, captions are used in a variety of situations. For example, the captions may be used in lieu of the audio components of the television signal so that viewers can still watch television in environments where the noise levels are very high, for example in a gymnasium.
The captioning for a television program include a textual representation of the entire contents of the television program since the captions are intended as a complete replacement for the audio components of a television program. This aspect of captions makes the captions useful for a variety of other purposes. For example, the captions can be used to create transcriptions of a television program for archival purposes. In addition, the captions provide a compact representation of the complete television program. Finally, a description or metadata may be generated for a television program using the caption information. These different uses for captioning data make captioning an attractive source of information and content for people desiring to form special interest groups or communities around particular television programs. For example, a commentator may want to create a talkshow to explore news items included in a televised news report. Such a talkshow would allow viewers and a commentator to fully explore news items within the context of a news broadcast.
Therefore, a need exists for an interactive program generation tool allowing the creation of a talkshow from captioning data. Such a tool should be lightweight, meaning it does not require a lot of processing resources to run, and should be able to generate interactive programming for a variety of different display devices. The present invention meets such a need.